“Our captain’s laying there on the ice. It’s nothing more than that…. I don’t think it’s malicious, but our captain’s laying on the ice. Our captain. You don’t want to see that.” —Nick Foligno, Toronto Maple Leafs, 2021
TORONTO — As Auston Matthews writhes and crumples into a ball on home ice, his left knee just smashed into by a dirty Radko Gudas play, the other four Toronto Maple Leafs on the ice turn a blind eye.
They give the villain a pass and their captain plenty of space to realize his pain.
William Nylander, who has ridden the highs and lows alongside Matthews for 10 seasons, tries to help the referees by raising a penalty arm. He sees the knee-on-knee unfold but later says he didn’t really understand the severity and sheepishly admits he “should’ve jumped in there.”
Morgan Reilly, the longest-serving Leaf, is a zone or two away. He says he didn’t have a good view of the collision, how badly Matthews was hurt in the moment. My fault, Rielly says: “Myself and the other people on the ice have to take responsibility for not being in there earlier. I certainly do. I take it all.”
Brandon Carlo was on the ice, too. He’s a nice man who helped Matthews to the room. But the big D-man, too, doesn’t so much as throw an insult in the direction of the Anaheim Ducks captain, apparently on a mission to eliminate the knees of anyone wearing a Maple Leaf and a captain’s ‘C’ this winter.
So was 20-year-old Easton Cowan, who gives chase to the puck and not Gudas, skating right by his centreman. (We’ll grant the rookie grace; he later attacked the bigger Jackson LaCombe. But we are concerned about the examples being set for the kid.)
In the time between Matthews getting helped off the ice, bound for imaging and possibly an early end to a disappointing campaign all around, and the announcement of a Friday phone hearing for Gudas that, at most, can result in a five-game suspension, a host of thoughts flood the mind.
To be fair, the Maple Leafs did make the Ducks pay on Gudas’s major, rallied to win the game and played with previously dormant passion and physicality in an excellent third period.
They showed up. Good. However, it was only after being shamed into action.
Nag the teenager enough times, threaten to take away screen time, and he will eventually clean his bedroom. But no one would interpret delayed, reluctant action as proof that he’s all grown up and about that tidy life.
Making up the bed just ain’t in his makeup.
“We should’ve had four guys in there, doing something about it,” head coach and PIM legend Craig Berube lamented to reporters post-game.
“We all would’ve liked everybody to get in there right away.”
A similar sentiment was echoed early this season, when No. 1 goaltender Anthony Stolarz was getting run over by Mason Marchment in front of bystanders in matching uniforms and feeling like he had to fight his own battles. Yet much of the discourse switched to how Stolarz was out of line for questioning the veterans’ on-ice investment.
“I mean, a lot of guys have been here for a while,” a fed-up and prescient Stolarz said in October. “We do have some time to gel. But at the end of the day, too, it’s more or less just about working hard. And when we work hard, the results come.”
At its core, this era of Maple Leaf hockey has long been criticized for its lack of grit and compete and connectedness.
When the mood strikes, they’re try-curious.
But it’s not instinctual or consistent enough.
Seeing Matthews down and no one willing to throw down — until what must’ve been one doozy of a Berube intermission rant later — had us remembering poor Timothy Liljegren getting injured by then-Bruin Brad Marchand, another longtime Leafs foe who got away with catching any Blue and White smoke.
Then-coach Sheldon Keefe was so livid and embarrassed, he called a meeting and showed the Leafs highlights of the Lightning sticking up for one another in such instances. Wrong one of us, wrong us all.
Seeing Matthews down reminded us of brief Leaf Nick Foligno in the 2021 playoff bubble. Foligno didn’t see even how teammate John Tavares got concussed in a double crash with Montreal’s Corey Perry and Ben Chiarot — an incident less deliberate than Gudas’s knee on Matthews.
“Our captain’s laying there on the ice. It’s nothing more than that,” Foligno explained of his instant decision to fight Perry. “I think it’s the right response.”
The Gudas incident had us thinking about Connor McDavid’s response Thursday, too, and how the most skilled player on the planet jumped Justin Hryckowian for shooting a (harmless) puck at Leon Draisaitl.
We thought about Berube, just a few losses ago, saying he can give his players X’s and O’s and rah-rah pep talks, but he can’t give them this. And he’s tapping his heart.
We even thought about the old “our power play is our enforcer” tactic. And we wondered about the ripple effect of trading away Nazem Kadri way back in 2019 for his overzealousness.
No doubt Kadri got carried away with the whole defending-my-teammates thing. But some franchises would rather tame tigers.
The great irony here in Toronto is that the roster has not been moulded in the image of its makers.
Ex-president Brendan Shanahan was a walking Gordie Howe hat trick in his heyday.
Coach Berube — he of 3,149 career penalty minutes, he who doesn’t miss a day of work after nearly having his frontal lobe sliced out by heavy gym equipment — still views the game through the eyes of a Broadstreet Bully.
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And current GM Brad Treliving prefers his rosters snottier than an Ontario daycare in February. Heck, one of his first moves was to (over)pay for Ryan Reaves simply to crank up the volume and toughness in the room.
Alas, we’re learning, that same executive is still seeking to alter the DNA that may be too entrenched. No wonder he’s reportedly entertaining the idea of trading Nylander.
Passivity doesn’t win championships, let alone a regular-season meeting against the Ducks.
Not until the Leafs felt guilty enough to bother engaging did they win one for their injured captain.
“It shows we need passion, emotion in the game to be successful,” Berube said.
But he didn’t say it with pride.
